ul412al

Report: Went out to Ft. Pickens and got 3 nice size flounder about 7:00 on Monday night. Clear water, no wind, fisherman's dream. Here is one of the doormats (and yes I know I am holding him upside down):



Now the Rant: Call me dumb or blind but we were cited by the FFWC last night. Evidently you can not transport filleted fish in a boat. The background of the story: we put in at Bayou Texar - ran to Gulf Breeze and picked up 2 more anglers - went flounderin'- returned to Gulf Breeze - filleted the fish and let the anglers off - the anglers didn't want' the fish so we threw them in the cooler - went to Bayou Texar - got a ticket. We were told that we "possesed fish not in whole condition". My thoughts (however naive they are) were that the fish were already landed (in Gulf Breeze). As witnessed by the picture above - all the fillets (3)were longer than the required 12" total fish length. No good, ticket anyway.

Anyway this causes a little grief for me. Is this really what the FWCC does all day? Find technicalities and punishpeoplefor obvious oversights? Are 3 fillets (that are obviously legal) what they fight for? Sorry to rant but there should be better descretion by the FWCC.

A little more background: I have fought to protect these fish my whole adult life. I have been the president of CCA Pensacola, received 2 conservation awards, andreceiveda FWCC pin fromthe Commission. Heck - I even helped provide pictures for the FWCC "fish identification book".

JoshH

You obviously don't know what your talking about. How are they supposed to know what kind of fish and how big it was if all you have is filets? What if they are Red Snapper? undersized Grouper? They are just doing their job-making sure we take care of the wildlife.

ul412al

That would be pretty impressive to catch a red snapper with a gig.

JoshH

How are they supposed to know how you caught it?

ul412al

I don't know, maybe look in the boat and see if there was anything in there except 4 gigs?

401 Cay

I'm assuming the fillets had the skin on. Either way, common sense should still apply. I often will clean fish at a friends dock, divy up the fish and head to the house by boat. I think discretion has to be applied by both parties. In this case it doesnt sound like the guy deserved a ticket. JMO.

Telum Pisces

+1

Ignorance of the law is not an excuse. Suck it up as a lesson learned. A fish filet could be any meat based on a simple visual inspection. You knew it was flounder, but they didn't. That is why the rule of "whole condition" exists. The rule is possesion based, so you were in posession of fish not in whole condition. They were perfectly right to give you a ticket. Could he have let you off, sure. But just because he didn't does not make him wrong for giving you a ticket.

AUradar

here's another way to look at it. If you were going to keep under sized flounder and wanted to try to get it by FWC if they stopped you, what would you do? You could try and hide it, but that can be difficult in a boat. So, you could fillet it and keep the fillets and chunk the rest. Then claim you cleaned the fish at a friends house when you dropped him off at the dock and swear they were legal. Would you buy that if you were a FWC officer?

In fact, I bet that's how most people try to keep their undersized fish, simply fillet them. Which is a bigger fine, undersized fish or having fillets?

Capt. Jon Pinney

Based on that quote you should have known better. Don't blame the FWC guy for enforcing the law. If you dont like it call your lawmakers....

ul412al

Gotcha AUradar. I am sure the law is there to prevent that from happening. Not sure which fine is bigger but it doesn't really matter. My thought process was based on "intent" which it obviously was not my intent to break the rules - just a mistake.

Sorry waterhazard, smart as I am - I don't know everything.

Just to clarify the post - I wasn't trying to "get away with anything" or "bashing a FWC guy". I was simply ranting (maybe too strong a word)about making an unintentional mistake. I am not arguing over paying a ticket, just the principle. As you can see 401 Cay has had a similar experience with taking fillets on a boat as have many people. So it's not necessarily common knowledge and I wanted to share my experience for the betterment of the forum.